She made no answer, and I found my spirits, always mercurial, beginning to sink a little. Noticing my dejection, she came to my rescue and soon had me all right again. We talked of the journey, she asking many particulars of my former visit to the Caribbean Islands. She had never been at sea for more than a few hours and wondered if she was liable to that malady so much to be dreaded, seasickness. I assured her it was not nearly as bad as it was painted and told of my own slight experiences in that line, years before.
My companion ate and drank sparingly. She declined my proposal to order champagne, and mixed her claret and apollinaris like a veritable tyro in restaurant dining. This rather pleased me, on the lookout as I was for indications that she might be other than she seemed. She had every mark of the true lady, and I was well prepared to believe it, when I learned, some days later, of the station in which she had been born and in which her childhood was passed.
"I have been thinking," she remarked, after one of her long pauses; "would it not be best for me, to take your family name? I wish, above all things, to avoid suspicion."
"I fear we are a little too late for that," I replied. "I was obliged to give your name to the agent and he has already placed it on the passenger list."
"Will that list get into the newspapers?" she asked, nervously.
"I presume so."
"Then you must manage to have my name changed, at all hazards. My old employer would use every means to annoy me if he discovered where I am going."
"It is only recorded as 'Miss M. May,'" I said. "Surely there is more than one person of that name in the world."
She shook her head and bit her lips in distress.
"It must be changed," she repeated. "It will not do to give him the slightest clue. He imagines himself 'in love'—Heaven help me!—and I dare not risk it. Any name you like, but my own."